by Zach Hughes
She was vaguely aware that Vinn, in addition to his other duties, was charged with keeping the film unit's computer in operational order.
"I'm impressed," she said. "I barely managed to fake my way through computer proficiency in school. I could never understand how data can be stored on molecules of liquid." She smiled. "But you were telling me how you came to be a part of our merry company."
"My old computer logic professor at Xanthos University was offered the job of scientific adviser for this film of yours," he went on. "His health wouldn't permit his coming, so he recommended me. I have to confess that I gave the proposition every bit of two seconds thought before I said yes."
"Didn't like it on Xanthos?"
"Yes and no," he said. "All my life I thought that there'd be nothing better than having my own laboratory with limitless access to equipment and funds. I knew that given the chance I could make giant strides in computer science."
"And?"
"And I spent eleven years in my beautifully equipped lab at Verbolt and the only discovery I made was that everything had already been discovered."
"Surely not."
"That's what I told myself as a sop to my ego," he confessed. "I wasalways the bright one in my class, Miss Webster. I was always tops. I was the great hope of my family and my instructors and when it came right down to it I discovered that I was, as our friend Frank says, just a Big Brain. I have an excellent memory. I'm a quick study. And I don't think I've ever had an original thought in my life."
"That's being rather hard on yourself. After all, you're young."
"Thirty-five."
"Young." She gave him her best smile. "Younger than I."
"No."
"Oh, yes," she said. "I'm quite ancient."
"You're beautiful," he whispered.
"Thank you." She winked at him as she lifted a spoonful of a quite delicious pudding, spoke with her mouth full as she put down the spoon and dish. "And now, sir, I think you'd better help me get back into my butterfly suit."
It was necessary for him to adjust the small bulge of the fake wing muscles that blended into the mounds of her breasts. He felt the softness and the heat. For a moment she was irritated as she saw his hands tremble, but the moment passed. He was, after all, not to be blamed for being affected by the fortunate blending of genes that had made her—so one fan magazine had said—the peak product of a million years of selective evolution. She walked beside him. He carried Miaree's eyes carefully. Just before they reached the makeup cubicle he said, "I have the use of an aircar. Have you had a chance to see the desert wilderness from the air?"
"No."
"If you're care to—"
"I'd like that," she said.
"After work, then," he said. "If Frank knocks off in time to leave us some daylight. I can have a picnic packed."
"Wonderful," she said, with a radiant smile.
Inside, he watched as the makeup techs worked. He, himself, applied the enzyme glue to the eyes and positioned them.
"That's much better," Sheba said, looking out through only one facet.
* * *
Vinn powered down the generators, put the portable Century Series computer to bed. The film crew was scattering. A pickup groundball game was getting underway in a field that had been cleared for the landings of supply and transport vessels. From one of the living cubicles came the soaring strains of the triumphant movement from Selvin Mann's symphony, The Ascent of Man. The murmur of multiple strings hushed the avian songs from the surrounding forest. The sun, whiter and much more fierce than the kind, yellow sun of Xanthos, was still three standard hours high.
When Vinn knocked on the door of Sheba's quarters she called out, "It's open." He stepped into her smell. Like her dressing room her living area was in a state of charmingly feminine deshabille. The briefs she had worn under the Artunee fur made a filmy, pastel pile on the carpet. The shower was running and the door to the bath was open.
"I hope that's you, Vinn," she called out.
"It's me," he said.
"Come and hand me my towel."
He swallowed, walked into a new smell of steamy moistness and fragrant soaps. The shower stall was enclosed in frosted duraglass, but he could see her silhouette. He found the towel. The rushing jet of water ceased. A slim, tanned arm disappeared above the shower stall.
"I'll be quick," she said, as the door to the shower opened and she stepped out. Her long, blonde hair was tucked up into a shower cap. Her petite, molded body was covered totally with the towel. She removed the cap and shook out her hair. It fell in a cascade of shining brightness. Vinn stood, mesmerized.
She laughed. "If, sir, you would kindly step out into the other room sothat I can get dressed?"
"Oh, sure," he said. "Sorry."
"I hope you remembered that food you promised," she called out to him. "I'm famished."
"Yes, I did."
She appeared in the doorway. She wore lime colored briefs and bra and heels that made her calves arch attractively. "We won't be doing any hiking, will we?"
He swallowed. "No."
"Oh, dear," she said, "I'll bet you didn't have any sisters."
"No. Why?"
"It's obvious that you're not used to seeing a lady being casual in her undress."
"No." He made an effort that surprised him. "But feel free—" He gulped.
"I mean, well."
She laughed in delight. "You remind me of my brother, old Josh. He was always yelling at me to put on some decent clothing."
"I am not yelling."
She winked. "But you're blushing."
"And enjoying," he said.
She lifted her arms high, slipped into a simple little sheath dress that came to a point just above her knees.
"I am ready," she announced.
They were approaching the car park when the director hailed them.
"Where do you think you're going, Sheba?" Frank demanded.
"Sightseeing," Sheba said.
"Our insurance does not cover flight in private aircars," Frank said.
"Mine does," Sheba said.
"Sheba, I'm warning you," the director said.
"Frank, I have a commercial license," Vinn said. "That automatically makes the aircar a public carrier."
"You see, love," Sheba said, "there's nothing to worry about."
Inside the aircar, as she settled in and fastened the safety harness she asked, "Really?"
"Really what?"
"Are you really licensed?"
"Oh, yeah. Unlimited, as a matter of fact."
"Anywhere, anytime, any size vessel?"
"I think that's the way it reads."
"I'm impressed anew," she said. "When did you manage to find time to study and get the field experience for that?"
"Well, I got my private license when I was in secondary school. I picked up some navigation hours in college, on field trips. And then I signed on as third mate on a deep space miner for a two year hitch to finish out the required hours."
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Thirty-five."
"Buster, either you're stretching the truth or you were an early starter," she said, disarming the challenge with one of her finest smiles.
"I entered Xanthos U. at fourteen," he said, as he fed power into the flux drive of the aircar and lifted it smoothly up and away in a soaring arc.
The desert began no more than four hundred miles from the location site. The jungle became thinner, was degraded into savanna bushland, and then, just beyond a tall, rocky range of mountains that stored any stray drop of moisture in eternal snows there was the harshness of aridity.
Barren sands and jutting buttes and mesas gave up the glory of their brilliant colors to the setting sun. Vinn slowed the aircar, lowered until they were crawling along just above the rocky terrain. The colorful upthrusts of the landscape towered above them.
"So beautiful," Sheba whispered.
"Pick a spot. We'll land and have our picnic."
&nb
sp; "There," she said, pointing to a parched, rocky mesa. "We should have a fine view."
With the sun low the heat of the desert diminished to the level of comfort. With the coming of twilight it would be quite chill. Sheba spread the cloth from the picnic basket, set out the goodies that Vinn had provided, led the way in diving into them with enthusiastic "Ummms" and other brilliant comments such as "ahhhh," and even, "good."
Vinn, too, found his appetite. The sun sank lower. Sheba shivered and Vinn leapt to his feet to drape a warm wrap around her shoulders. He was still on his feet when Sheba lifted her arm, pointed, and said, "Wow, look."
A blaze of fire was sweeping across the cloudless sky from east to west toward the setting sun. Sheba jumped up, put her arm around Vinn's waist. It was over in a few seconds. The fiery object seemed to be coming directly toward them.
It flashed by overhead and the sonic boom jarred them, reverberated in the arid valley below.
"There's going to be one hell of an impact," Vinn whispered, but even as he spoke the object arced upward, drove toward the blue dome of sky, and disappeared.
"Some damned fool just burned off a few hundred thousand credits worth of insulation," Vinn said.
"Wow," Sheba said, her arm still around Vinn.
"Well, there's still dessert," Vinn said.
She ate the frozen delicacy slowly, licking the spoon with evident enjoyment. The sun was below the horizon but left a lingering farewell in the form of a blazing red sky. Sheba finished her dessert, sighed with satisfaction, snugged the shawl around her.
"Thank you," she said. "That sunset is the nicest gift I've had lately."
"It is I who should thank you," he said.
"Oh, well, if you want me to arrange another spectacular sunset for you, just let me know."
"For coming with me," he explained. He spread his hands. "I still can't believe it. Me, having a picnic with Sheba Webster. You and I have grown up together, but with you on the holoscreen. I saw you first when I was sixteen. I spent hours in the library searching out all the films in which you appeared, and I haven't missed one since."
She laughed. "Good Lord, you saw my early efforts and you still like me?"
"Your acting ability developed steadily. Your beauty just ripened, piling flawlessness atop perfection."
She watched the play of crimson fade on the horizon. "Vinn, I understand what you're saying. When you were watching me in three dimensions and glowing color in a holofilm I was—"
"Bigger than life, because I wanted to see you on the big theater screens, not in a small room."
"And untouchable," she went on. She reached across and placed the tips of four fingers on the back of his hand. "But that's just the work that I do. That three-dimensional image is not Sheba Webster, but what she does to earn her daily bread and keep things from being boring." She took his hand in both of hers and squeezed. "This is Sheba Webster. I'm just a woman. I'm real. I have headaches and if I eat unwisely or drink too much.
I have a bad stomach and my breath gets a bit rank. When the day's shooting is over, I go to my cubicle and I can feel loneliness just as deeply as anyone."
He cleared his throat.
"So don't try to make me something I'm not, some object of awe and worship. I'm human, just like you."
"You're put together better than most women, you'll have to admit that."
"Ummm," she said, still holding onto his hand. "I'm glad for that, because it makes me a rich woman and it makes you like me."
"I do, very much."
"Like me?"
"More than that."
"Well, let's not move too fast. Let's take it one step at a time."
"I've never wanted to kiss anyone so badly in my life," he said.
"That's a small step," she said, leaning toward him.
She closed her eyes as his lips touched hers. She had kissed and been kissed many times, on the stage and in real time. She had never been promiscuous. She was not one of those who, in order to achieve her goal, bartered herself to the rich and powerful. From the first she had made it clear to the moguls and powers of the industry that she was not an object of trade, that she was Sheba, and that was enough to earn her her rightful place. She was not virgin, of course. She'd even been married once. That experiment had ended so badly that for many years she had avoided intimate relationships. However, she was a sensual person. She could take delight in good food, good music, a well done drama, and she could, with the right man, be a bawdy, delightful wanton. She wasn't sure—not just yet—whether she wanted to lower her guard enough to let Vinn Stem into her life, but with his lips on hers there was a moment when her libido stirred.
She let him enclose her in his arms. In the chill of the evening his warmth was stimulating. She widened her kiss, felt the hard muscles of his back under her palms, heard her sister Ruth say, "Sheba, Sheba."
"Ummm," she said, slightly annoyed but not questioning.
"Sheba, listen," said her brother David.
"Sheba, we need you," Ruth said.
"Huh?" She pulled away from Vinn's kiss.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said.
The voices were still there, heard dimly in her mind, the words indistinct but imparting a disturbing sense of urgency. She shook her head, gave herself once more to Vinn's kiss and the voices clamored in her head, driving away all hints of pleasure and desire.
"That's one step," she whispered, as she pushed Vinn away.
"I want to see you again," he said.
"Every day, lover," she said, rising.
"And at night?"
"One step at a time," she repeated.
She kissed him lingeringly on the steps to her living cubicle and for a moment it seemed that the voices were back. Inside she undressed quickly, cleaned her teeth, climbed gratefully into her bed. They came to her in her dreams.
"Sheba, Sheba."
"We need you, Sheba."
"Please, please, Sheba."
"Sheba, Sheba, Sheba."
CHAPTER SIX
Lieutenant Angela Bardeen pinned the twin suns first on one of Joshua Webster's shoulders and then the other. Finished, she stepped back and gave him a snappy salute. They were alone in Josh's office. The newly opened letter confirming his promotion lay on his desk.
"Very becoming, sir," Angela said.
Josh stepped forward, lifted her from her feet in an embrace, and kissed her.
"I would have expected more reserve in a senior officer," she teased.
"Tonight we celebrate," he said. "We'll have dinner at that place you like so well."
She pouted. "You always said it was too expensive."
"We'll blow my first month's pay increase."
She placed her palm on his forehead. "Well, you're not feverish."
He spanked her playfully on the rounded rump. The light slap was simultaneous with a thundering explosion that knocked the wall pictures askew and caused a suspended model of an X&A battle cruiser to sway on its hanging.
"What the devil?" Josh yelped.
Angela was on the communicator immediately. She listened for a few moments. "Some clown buzzed headquarters at supersonic speed."
"Well, they'll have his balls," Josh said. "They did identify him, of course."
Angela frowned. "I'm afraid not."
"You're kidding me."
"Sorry, no."
"Someone busts through the busiest air lanes in the galaxy at speed, rattles the windows of X&A headquarters, and he wasn't identified? What the hell, was he invisible?"
Admiral Julie Roberts and the X&A brass had substantially the same question. Captain Josh Webster was directed to find the answer.
* * *
"Captain," said the shift supervisor at Port Xanthos Control, "it was almost as if the sonofabitch was invisible."
"He couldn't have been going that fast," Josh said, "not and keep his hull intact."
"It wasn't that he was going all that fast," the s
upervisor said. "We had him on screen for a few seconds, long enough to measure his velocity. The speed isn't what bothers me. Any ship with a halfway decent flux drive could manage the speed. The question is, how did he drive into and out of the atmosphere at that rate without ablating his hull." He turned to a table, lifted a holoflat, handed it to Josh. "The automatic equipment snapped thirty or forty exposures. This is typical."
The glowing blur of a fireball was centered in the picture. "Computer enhancement?" Josh asked.
The supervisor handed him another holoflat. The central image was fuzzy and shapeless, nothing more than a concentration of light.
"What's your guess?" Josh asked.
"Sir, I don't know. It would be comforting if I could say it was a meteor.
But this thing seemed to materialize out of thin air. Tracking started less than fifty miles to the east at an altitude of a hundred and fifty thousand feet. The track arced down to pass headquarters at two thousand feet and then went vertical."
* * *
"Sit down, Captain," Admiral Julie Roberts said. Josh nodded, obeyed.
The admiral looked at him expectantly. "Well?" she asked.
"There seemed to be a tendency to brush off the incident as anunexplained anomaly," Josh said.
"That just won't do, Captain," Julie said sharply.
Josh spread his hands. "Something was there, obviously, something with mass to create a sonic boom and make an image on the detector screens. Any vessel with a fairly modern flux drive could match the speed, but at the expense of burning away so much insulation that it would break up."
"Josh, the whole place is buzzing," the admiral said. "You wouldn't believe some of the speculation that is going on."
"I can imagine," Josh said.
"We're sitting at the bottom of the most tightly controlled air and approach space in the U.P.," Julie said. "The volume of traffic dictates not just one extra-atmospheric layer of control but three. At peak times there's often a hold of hours on a ship wanting to land on Xanthos, and with three layers of approach control in near space a rock the size of your fist couldn't get through into atmosphere undetected."
"Something did," Josh said grimly.
Julie placed delicate fingers alongside her chin and stared moodily out of a window. The galaxy was big. Although man had been in space for thousands of years, it was still largely unexplored. And beyond the scattered rim stars at the edge of the Milky Way the bleak void of extragalactic space began. On the colossal scale of the universe man's little galaxy was an insignificance. Man himself? He was a frail creature, made of ephemeral stuff. He blustered himself outward from his small worlds, going armed and apprehensive, for although he was alone there was daunting evidence that others had gone before him. She had seen the Dead Worlds plying their eternal orbits in the hard, radiative glare of the core mass. She had read the Miaree manuscript, the chilling account of the death of two races; and she had come into contact with Erin Kenner's world. Intelligent species had come and gone in the home galaxy and one could only guess about the billions of possibilities offered in other areas of the cosmos. And to all races known to man had come death. Devastation.